Balta1701

It's called the Selig rule, it actually predates the Rooney Rule and it is written with the same setup in mind. The White Sox are required to conduct an actual interview with a minority candidate for head coach and management positions. In 2021, Jerry Reinsdorf personally flouted this rule in order to hire Tony LaRussa. He brought in Willie Harris, one of his former players, for a sham interview with no actual chance of being hired. Willie went along with this, most likely a combination of him needing the experience and him being unwilling to burn a bridge with the White Sox. Reinsdorf was somewhat given a pass for this as he does have a long history of employing and promoting minority candidates for those positions and it may have been a one time thing to hire a friend of his. Hell, Jerry Reinsdorf was instrumental in the creation of the Selig Rule, he's actually pictured in the article I linked above! If, however he wants to make it a habit of flouting the Selig rule and conducting dishonest, sham interviews, we should label it as what it is - a shift towards a racist hiring pattern, and he should get sued by the people he is abusing in that process. While Chris Getz may not have been willing to burn that bridge, right now the NFL is facing a discrimination lawsuit for exactly this same sort of behavior by a person who was willing to do so. https://apnews.com/article/nfl-coach-brian-flores-football-discrimination-lawsuit-5322d8efcb685c9508e703cd40c3a5f1

That's all I Getz.

Hell, just interview them! Perform a real search. Even if you have an early favorite, give other people fair opportunities to be considered for the position.

I believe it was the Cleveland Browns who got sued for doing this? Or was it the Dolphins? Anyway, people in front offices who aren’t white should definitely know what is up with this franchise as they’ve played this game before. It wouldn’t be outrageous for them to outright refuse the interview with what we’ve already heard, or to demand some assurance that they are actually being considered rather than used for tokenism. If the White Sox refuse such assurances, take it to the press.

Just to stress, if this is the case then it is flagrant flaunting of the Selig rule. MLB might let him off the hook for it again, but his fans shouldn’t and whoever they use for the sham interview also shouldn’t.

It is worth remembering that Willie Harris wasn’t going to sue if he was given a sham interview for mob boss reasons, he couldn’t afford to burn the bridge to the White Sox if he did want to stay in coaching. There is a good chance that front office people will be more willing to do that if Reinsdorf tries to use them as a sham way around the Selig rule.

It’s a $2 billion business. If he can no longer handle the duties of running it, he should hand it off to someone who can.

Moore.

I haven’t seen anyone note this yet and it’s now rather important so I’m going to say this. If this does happen, that will be 3 times Reinsdorf has intervened to hire a white man who can’t actually stand in a competitive interview process. Thats a pattern. Are we now specifically a team where we need to employ white men only in key positions and are terrified that someone might be better qualified who isn’t white so we do everything possible to ensure that doesn’t happen? Mandatory management quotas of white people.

I agree. That doesn’t change my point at all, they do everything right and they will see results in ticket sales in 2026. There is no celebrity manager they can bring in who will magically make people come see a 90 plus loss team next year.

No one is buying tickets because they replaced Grifol with Joe Espada, let alone some other unknown. This is just dumb.

It is behind a paywall for me.

The obvious answer I always give is I don’t care, I have no special insight into the question, but want a solid process. Bring in a search firm to contact numerous candidates around the league to gauge interest. Perhaps collect some application information about them. Assemble a group of experienced consultants from diverse backgrounds throughout baseball. I literally don’t care if LaRussa is one of them, but several of them should be independent of the White Sox organization. Conduct a series of interviews. Gauge their interest, their goals, their philosophy, their experience, their background, their reaction to the current state of the White Sox. Make sure your group of candidates is actually diverse, not pale white. These are GM candidates not Sox. Narrow your candidates down and conduct legitimate, professional background checks. Perhaps conduct a series of interviews with final candidates. Your final decision is then made after full consideration and open discussion amongst your panel members. The owner should be involved in these discussions at some point but they should also be given time to voice opinions when he is not present so as to avoid undue influence on the process. Offer the best candidate a detailed 5 or 6 year deal with a competitive salary and well defined expectations, along with clear goals and evaluation targets that are tough but also fair. I don’t know that Ryan Poles is the best GM in football, but the Chicago Bears followed this process 2 years ago and they’re not a model of management effectiveness. If they can do it, anyone can. Its not only how a professional billion dollar business would conduct these matters, it also sets a professional tone throughout your organization and makes your business operations look good.

Reading between the lines a little bit - at Soxfest that year, Rick Hahn bragged about adding "Multiple middle of the order hitters". That was only a week or so after Levine put out that the White Sox had offered Machado 7/$175, which actually got picked up and shared with a prepared graphic by the official MLB.com twitter before it was pulled down - likely because Machado's agent complained (he repeatedly complained about leaks, which gives you a target for who might have been leaking stuff). My guess has always been they thought they could get Machado for $175 and Harper for $200 million, and that they were simply unwilling to go any higher on either of them than what was offered for Machado, so once that hit $300 million they just dropped out. A "$200 million" offer given to Boras wouldn't have garnered much interest from them no matter how much they liked the presentation.

He won a World Series title (yay, he does get credit here, this came out of the Greinke deal, serious prospect development, some good trades, and an inventive bullpen use) but that was after a super long rebuild process even for KC (hired in 2006, made the playoffs in 2014), and after breaking that team apart post 2015, he spent the next 7 seasons with the Royals rebuilding and they have a bottom of the league system to show for it despite finishing at the bottom constantly and getting benefits like revenue sharing and extra draft picks. He has also inappropriately allowed his religion to influence things in baseball, including holding an "anti-porn" seminar for his baseball team and very likely allowing it to influence his drafting and player selection, having a much higher fraction of his drafted and signed players seemingly be open and public Christians than could happen by chance alone. This may well have contributed to the extra long and failed rebuilds that cost him his job. Adding in Getz to that, who would be coming from the White Sox's system, with a Royals background, and could be the only guy on Earth who might tolerate things being done with the same lack of professionalism and other problems that existed under Hahn and Williams, it does not look positive or hopeful on paper.

I'd turn around and say the exact opposite. If the White Sox hired good people, and had the organization pointed in a positive direction in a couple years, this would substantially increase its value in a sale, and new owners would be very likely to want to see things through with those people. If the White Sox were to hire someone like Getz and Moore, well yeah, they're removed almost immediately if the team is sold, and this will probably hurt the team's value in any attempted sale.

just to add this, if a new GM decides they are cleaning house, they can clean house at their discretion as well.

That moment when you click on a thread and the "posted images" option shows Steve Stone and you don't know whether to keep clicking though

Does Dayton Moore have any connection to LaRussa?

Naw. Deciding baseball players in drafts and trades based on whether they are Christian or not rather than based on their baseball skills, that's bad. Hiring people for a baseball team based on whether they're Christian or not rather than based on their abilities, that's bad.

Remember, leaking stuff to blame someone else when things have gone wrong or proven unpopular is the exact kind of toxic behavior we’ve seen from these clowns over 11 years. Especially for Hahn, his motivation now is a new job. Could he be lying to make himself look better?

Weren’t the two teams that spent the most last offseason the Mets and Yankees? There’s a lesson here.

I disagree.